Fact Sheet – Take with and leave with legislators on March 8

Print Me: Factsheet

Facts – The budget crisis at UIC

• The State of Illinois owes the university $483 million.

• State support of the University has dropped over time from 48% of our total budget in 1990 to only 16% in 2010.

• Since 2002, the State has cut back its support of the University by almost 40%, adjusted for inflation. Tuition keeps going up because that is the only way the University can make up for such severe cuts. This puts the burden directly on our students, many of whom already struggle to pay for college.

• Numbers of tenure-stream faculty have been diminishing over the past 20 years.  In 1991, UIC’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences had 596 tenure-stream faculty, and in 2010, the number is 365.  Meanwhile, enrollments have steadily increased.  This means that we can offer fewer courses and class sizes are larger, reducing the quality of education.

Facts – UIC’s Impact on Chicago and Illinois

• The largest university in the Chicago area, UIC has 12,000 employees and 26,000 students.  It is among this country’s most diverse university campuses.

• UIC claims the nation’s largest medical school.  Approximately 1 in 6 Illinois physicians, 44% of the state’s dentists, and a third of the state’s pharmacists are alumni of UIC’s health sciences colleges.  UIC’s Medical Center and clinics combine to serve more than 600,000 patient visits a year.

• UIC is among Chicago’s top 20 employers.  More than 5,800 UIC employees, 8,200 UIC students, and 67,000 UIC alumni reside in the city of Chicago.  The university’s alumni, through their own wages and salaries, contribute about $21.2 billion per year to the state’s economy, including more than 265,000 jobs.

• UIC has total direct spending of $1.8 billion, but the ripple effect of these funds leads to a combined economic impact of $7.3 billion annually.  All of our employees, materials, and services, as well as university capital spending, contribute millions of tax dollars to the state’s economy every year.  Even taking into account the state’s spending on the University of Illinois, our tax contributions still result in a net gain to the state of about $535 million each year.